In Libyan Port, Stranded Migrants Watch Hope Depart

Sunday

Feb 27, 2011 at 5:15 AM

Migrant workers from poor countries, stranded by war and forsaken by their employers, have gathered in Benghazi for protection and a way out.

KAREEM FAHIM

BENGHAZI, Libya — American and British citizens have been evacuating for days. The Chinese workers were on their way, and the Bosnians stood ready with their bags on the shore. But from the milky windows of stifling rooms in a makeshift camp, the migrant workers from other, poorer countries, stranded by war and, in some cases, forsaken by their employers, watched cruise ships — and salvation — depart.

Many of the workers — from Vietnam and Thailand, Bangladesh and Ghana — worked for Turkish construction companies that had projects under way worth billions of dollars in Libya. The workers said that the Turkish managers of some of those companies quickly left Libya, sometimes without returning the workers’ passports. In other cases, though, the companies seemed to be actively trying to help.

But there seemed to be little assistance available for black African workers, including many from Ghana, Nigeria, Mali and Burkina Faso. Libya has become a dangerous place to be a black man, after Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi used African mercenaries to kill opponents of his government. Now the workers, some of whom have seen colleagues killed, are kept under armed guard and moved from place to place because residents have objected to their presence.

“The Ghanaian ambassador said he didn’t know what to do,” said Idris Shebany, one of several Libyan volunteers running the camp. “Let them stay here.”

On Saturday, in the rain under a loading crane on a dock next to a Greek cruise ship, a group of Nigerians watched luckier workers make their way up a gangway. The Nigerians said they were told that they could not board the ship. “It’s not clear that a boat is coming for us,” said Ali Uchichi, 27.

Some said they had heard a rumor that a plane was waiting for them in Tripoli, but, of course, there was no way for them to reach the capital. Furthermore, they were not sure whether the rumor was true.

“We don’t want to die here,” Mr. Uchichi said.

There are as many as 1.5 million migrants working in Libya, according to the International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental group. Since the uprising that started in this city, hundreds of thousands of people trying to escape the violence have streamed toward the borders with Egypt or Tunisia, or departed on chartered planes and ferries sent from their home countries.

With parts of Libya locked in armed struggle, Benghazi — its faded colonial buildings brightened by antigovernment graffiti — lurches between euphoria and apprehension. At the courthouse nearby, a fledgling authority is taking over the functions of the government and helping to plan a military response to Colonel Qaddafi’s brutal suppression of the uprising. Many people in this center of resistance to the colonel’s rule made rosy predictions that the leader would be gone by now. But, through violence, he has held power.

So with blankets wrapped in zippered plastic bags and whatever documents they can muster, the migrants flee.

Almost 20,000 workers have cycled through a camp here, in Benghazi’s port, living in trailers that were apparently used by a company rehabilitating the port. They were met by members of this city’s thriving volunteer corps — men and women working to defy Colonel Qaddafi’s assertion that the uprising would lead to certain chaos.

A man who sells women’s clothes carries a machine gun and patrols the camp. Other businessmen register the workers, stock the kitchen or outfit a hospital. Juice, dates and biscuits have been donated by residents, some of whom have lent their kitchens to the effort.

Even so, the conditions are harsh. On thin mattresses, the men sleep 10 or more to a tiny room, and, for all of the donations, there is not enough food. “I am now very hungry,” said Nguyen Van Thuoun, 22, a laborer. “There is not enough rice.” Trash was piled high outside a trailer where Indian employees of Hyundai had stayed.

Many workers traveled hundreds of miles to get to the camp. Pakistani and Bangladeshi pipeline workers came on buses from deep in Libya’s southern desert. Chinese workers drove their dump trucks right to the Benghazi port, left the keys in the ignition (or forgot them) and got on the boats. Ghanaians who worked in Benghazi came because they no longer felt safe in the city.

Abubakar Ummar, a 29-year-old Ghanaian plasterer who worked at a Turkish construction company, said that men with machetes had recently attacked the building where he was living with other workers. “They came to us at midnight,” Mr. Ummar said. One of the workers, a young man about 25 years old, was killed instantly, he said, adding that another had died of his wounds the next day.

His company’s managers, who, according to Mr. Ummar, had not paid their workers in several weeks, were no help. “They gave us our passports and our ID’s and let us mind our lives,” he said.

Mr. Ummar stood in line with hundreds of other African migrants at a school where volunteers registered them, while men with sunglasses and machine guns stood watch outside. The organizers said that later on Saturday the migrants would be moved to a stadium because local residents had complained that the situation was making the neighborhood unsafe.

Like the volunteers, some of the workers have assumed new roles. Mansoor K. Warraich, a quality assurance manager for a Turkish company that helped build a Libyan water pipeline, now helps organize about 600 stranded workers. All of the company’s Turkish managers and workers, except one, were able to leave the country several days ago. The workers that remain include many from Pakistan and Bangladesh.

They said they left their camps along the pipeline after they were raided by bandits.

“We want to know what’s going to happen,” said Mr. Warraich. “I believe there is a plan, but we don’t know about the plan.”

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.